Project Description

Film + HTML

Not all of us are built for the gridiron, at least not any more. What would it take to fulfill that fantasy of scoring the game winning touchdown when the last time you wore the helmet was in high-school? We took the challenge to visualize a football game unlike any you’ve ever seen, and find yet another creative answer to the age old question: What would you do if you won the lottery?

This latest spot in the award winning “Dept. of Imagination” campaign from Cole & Weber United and Washington’s Lottery, took cues from iconic sports commercials to set up the viewer with an intense night game between rivaling teams. After some bone-crunching action, the play is interrupted by a seemingly normal phone call. This call introduces us to the reality that these massive football players are actually realistic exo-suits, designed to help play the intensely physical game regardless of your own personal fitness level.

To create the suit design, we got pretty granular. I mean, let’s face it, we geek out on this stuff. Haven’t hit the gym lately? No worries, these suits have built in fiber muscle amplifiers designed to give you that edge. We’ve also lined the entire suit with a coolant circulatory system to wick that sweat away.

To Design this hyper real world we developed a graphic language used for UI elements on the suit that would later be explored for game graphics. We’ve designed a custom UI that gives you all pertinent information at a glance, both on your visor and on a wristband touch-screen controller. The suit’s HUD also has a built in simulator mode when you’ve got that itch for a game but the rest of your team is stuck at work.

To Play this game, we elaborated on both the design of the charecters and the UI language. For our football game, we took heavy inspiration from classics like Battlezone and combined our own aesthetic into this world. We imagine inside the suit, behind the visor, this is what we would see. On top of designing the game, we had to develope a UX that created an enjoyable 1st person football game experience.

Hard Hitting Code

For this game, we really wanted to push the limits of what’s possible using HTML5 technologies. Inspired by games like Battlezone and Temple Run, we knew the game had to be 3D, and to achieve this look in-browser (and mobile friendly!) was no easy task. Leveraging our heritage in traditional animation, mixed with our strong team of graphical developers, we were able to build the look right in line with the UI design language, light weight enough to run seamlessly on your mobile device. Play the game and see how many touchdowns you can score. After each touchdown the difficulty goes up, and trust us, around level 4 it gets pretty friggin’ hard. To connect the game to the spot, we utilized Shazam to recognize the spot’s audio and link the user directly into the game. By simply letting Shazam listen as the spot is playing, the user is instantly linked right into the football simulator, creating an easy and approachable digital extension to an already tech driven story. In the end, the Washington’s Lottery Football campaign spanned the creative gamut. A VFX driven spot, a classic banner-ad arcade game, and a unique 1st-person football game all designed to be watched and played by everyone. An incredibly fun experience and a uniquely creative campaign.

To connect the game with the spot, we utilized Shazam to recognize the spot’s audio and link the user directly into the game. By simply letting Shazam listen as the spot is playing, the user is instantly linked right into the football simulator, creating an easy and approachable digital extension to an already tech driven story. In the end, the Washington’s Lottery Football campaign spanned the creative gamut. A VFX driven spot, a classic banner-ad arcade game, and a unique 1st-person football game all designed to be watched and played by everyone. An incredibly fun experience and a uniquely creative campaign.

Media spanning creative was the catalyst for this diverse and unique project. Not content with simply making an add-on game, we dove head-first into some cutting edge 3D HTML5 techniques to bring the virtual football field to life and try something completely new.